


Cursed - Prologue

by Aivy



Series: Aivy's Bunnyfarm [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Halloween 1981, Plot Bunny, Prologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 19:28:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14837780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aivy/pseuds/Aivy
Summary: Severus Snape arrives at Godric's Hollow on Halloween 1981. So far, so canon. But Lord Voldemort doesn't cast the Killing Curse at Baby Potter...





	Cursed - Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This Plot Bunny is the prologue to a potential story I might one day actually write down. I publish it to motivate me to do so and not just think out new scenes in my head all the time.

It was a cold night on all Hallows’ Eve, the stars visible on the clear sky twinkling merrily when Severus Snape followed his master into Godric’s Hollow.

Since the time when it had become clear that the prophecy would fit either Lily’s child or the Longbottom boy and he had begged the Dark Lord to no avail to spare his childhood friend, he had dreaded this day. The day the Dark Lord decided to thwart the prophecy and eliminate the danger provided by the prophesied child. He only hoped he would not come too late. The Dark Lord had already been gone for a while when Bellatrix had bragged that their master’s secret spy had finally brought him the location of the Potter’s Fidelius-protected hide-out. Voldemort’s damning words replayed again and again inside Severus’ mind:

“I won’t let any parent live that would want to avenge me stealing their baby. Could you guarantee that your Mudblood wouldn’t act on her grief over the loss of her child?”

He had not been able to promise his master that and so he was fearing for Lily’s life while he hurried through the deserted streets on his way to the Potter’s cottage. It hadn’t taken long to bully Pettigrew into giving up the secret to him as well. The coward had given in as soon as he had felt Severus dark stare focussing on himself and blurted out the location to everyone in the vicinity.

When he eventually arrived at the building, the door stood wide open and he dashed inside, only barely avoiding stepping on the body laying on the floor inside the hallway. He wasted no thought on the man he had hated most in the world, maybe second to Sirius Black. The ground floor showed no damage; evidently the Dark Lord had not been met with much resistance as the Potters had thought themselves save behind the Fidelius. Fools!

He wanted to run up the stairs, but willed himself to treat silently, aided by a spell that muffled his footsteps. A baby’s wail drifting down from the second floor told im that at least the main target was still alive. However, the noise also drowned out any other sounds Severus may have heard otherwise.

His foot had just touched the uppermost step of the stairs when the telltale green light of the Killing Curse suffused the hallway, emitting from what he thought had to be the nursery. The wail picked up a notch,only to be silenced a second later. Despair laid itself around Severus like a heavy cloak.

Despite his desire to either collapse or destroy anything in sight with rage, he forced himself to make the last few steps that carried him to the doorframe of the room where both the baby’s crying and the spell light had come from. Inside, he found the familiar awe and fear inspiring figure of the Dark Lord towering over the crib, the only woman he had ever loved dead at his master’s feet.

With Severus’ world breaking apart, it took him a moment until he was able to hear the murmur coming from the Dark Lord’s lips. He could not understand single words, only a constant drone. Either the darkest wizard ofo their time was speaking to the baby, or he was uttering an incantation that had many more syllables than Ava-da Ke-da-vra. Thankfully, he wasn’t thinking clearly or he would have had second thoughts about attacking the powerful man he was bound to.

This way, he acted on instinct, raising his wand and casting the Killing Curse at the unprotected back. As Severus was one of the few people in this part of the world capable of non-verbal magic, no sound warned the victim of his impending doom and the Dark Lord was so focussed on the child that he noticed the flash of green light too late to sidestep or even turn around to see his attacker.

With sudden horror, Severus realised that he might have hit the crib and the baby inside if the other man had been able to dive out of the way successfully.

Just like everyone else that had been hit by an Avada, his former master dropped on the spot. What happened then though, was not in accordance with normal procedure. The body exploded in a burt of magic when the dark wizard’s fail-safes kicked in. Severus shielded his face from debris, only lovering his arms when everything had settled again. He noticed that the Dark Lord had left nothing behind but a few specks of dust and a caved in roof, as most of the energy seemed to have escaped skywards.

By pure luck or the intervention of higher beings, the crib had only suffered some scorch marks, the child appeared alive and well, though frozen in shock; its wide green eyes so akin to the curse that had killed its parents and their murdered reminding Severus of the woman that was now partially buried under rubble.

Finally giving in to his emotions, he fell to his knees beside her, cleared the debris away and pulled the love of his life into his arms, tears flowing freely from his eyes. For several minutes, he mourned her, their friendship of the past and the future that had never been. Only the child overcoming its shock and starting to cry again ended his emotional breakdown.

Occluding his mind with the most difficulty he had ever had, even counting his relentless training under a suspicious Dumbledore and every and all torture suffered under his other masters wand, he let go of Lily and raised to his feet. With trepidation he approached the screaming infant, remembering the lengthy incantation the Dark Lord had spoken. What had the other wizard done to Lily’s child?

The crying lessened when he stopped in front of the crib. Tear-filled emerald-green eyes stared at him with an awareness that seemed much too developed for a one-year old. Though what did he know about children so young? He had enough trouble handling them from age eleven onward!

After long moment of staring at each other with the infant still sniffing loudly, Severus regained enough of his wit to croak out a:

“Be quiet, child!”

The result was quick and quite baffling, as the one-year old was silent immediately; not even a spell could have been more effective. Not wanting to believe in the uneasy feeling in his gut, he choked out another order:

“Put your arms up and hold still.”

At once it raised its tiny, chubby arms and held them in that position without so much as an additional twitch. While Severus expected Lily to have been a good mother, that level of obedience in so small a child - in any child! - was unnatural and it frightened him.

If he didn’t know better, he would have thought that the infant was under the Imperius Curse. But that couldn’t be. He himself hadn’t cast one and the Dark Lord was dead, or at least banished for the moment, and couldn’t sustain any spellwork, and last but not least the child had been lively only a moment ago and even now its gazed wasn’t glazed or clouded by anything but tears.

Tentatively, he picked up the too quiet, too still baby and held it against his chest like an easily breakable and potentially volatile potions ingredient.

“Relax, little one,” he murmured, as it still had its arms raised and immediately the small body snuggled against him. The normally strict and dour potions master felt immensely out of his depth, and his suspicion what the Dark Lord had done got stronger with every second. Surely it couldn’t be natural that a baby, even Lily’s baby, felt safe in his hold.

With the infant cradled in his black-clad arms, Severus left the destroyed room and his dead love behind. He would have to examine the curse he suspected his former master having cast on the infant carefully to determine how long-lasting it would be, and who exactly was included in its effect. Was it only Death Eaters or had the wizard simply not had had the time to finalise the spell? And had -

His thought process was interrupted by the deafening roar of Black’s infernal motorbike. Why the enchanted contraption hadn’t been confiscated yet by the ministry was anybody’s guess. As the last thing Severus needed right now was getting accused of helping the Dark Lord murdering the Potters and stealing their child, he charmed the little one to sleep with a whispered apology and laid it down in the bassinet in the living room.

He had already turned away to leave when he changed his mind and cast one more spell on the baby because he didn’t trust the Gryffindors not to fuck things up. It would be easily rectifiable by himself or any medi-witch or -wizard that performed a check-up for the child. That way it was protected from any carelessly spoken words, if his guess was right.

He, Severus, and any healer Dumbledore trusted to take care of the one-year old - as he wasn’t so deluded not to expect the Headmaster to put his nose into this affair - could then analyse the curse without hurry and take any counter-measures necessary to help - or so he thought.

The yowl of the engine drowned out the sound of his apparition. Many years would go by, but one day Severus would rue his decision to leave Lily’s child for its godfather to take care of.


End file.
